2023-10-17

Introduction

  • Who are we? Cancer Alliance Data, Evidence and Analysis Service, part of the NHS England National Cancer Programme.

  • Who are our stakeholders? Performance leads, policy makers and analysts.

  • What products do we produce? A range of weekly and monthly regular reports and other ad-hoc pieces.

The challenges

  • Resource intensive

    • Historically consisted of 8 separate Excel based weekly reports
    • Expected to be ‘publication ready’ within a tight timescale (around 2.5 hours) 😰😰😰

  • Business as usual

    • A diverse range of stakeholders
    • Stakeholders mostly with limited exposure to R (primarily familiar with MS Office products such as Excel and PowerPoint)

The challenges (continued)

  • Technical challenges

    • Diverse geographical interests and policy driven requirements
    • Limited resource and time
    • No Shiny server hosting capacity (at least not yet)
    • Static PowerPoint slide style products were preferred over interactive dashboards by some

The solution

  • A Rmarkdown dashboard that is interactive, reproducible and user friendly

  • Built to cater to a wide range of audiences. Data presented and downloadable in multiple formats (visuals, raw data etc), clear tips on how to use interactive elements and interpret the data.

  • Workaround for the technical challenges

    • A combination of R packages such as flexdashboard, crosstalk, plotly, DT and flextable
    • Minimal amount of Javascript and CSS to create an “illusion” of dependency dropdown 😵

The solution (continued)

Javascript 😫

$(document).ready(function() {
    document.getElementById("PTL_TS_Primary_Selection").getElementsByClassName("selectized")[0].selectize.removeOption("");
    document.getElementById("PTL_TS_Primary_Selection").getElementsByClassName("selectized")[0].selectize.setValue("National", false);
    document.getElementById("PTL_TS_Prov_Selection").getElementsByClassName("selectized")[0].selectize.removeOption("");
    document.getElementById("PTL_TS_Regional_Selection").getElementsByClassName("selectized")[0].selectize.removeOption("");
});

var ct_filter = new crosstalk.FilterHandle('PTL_TS');
$('#PTL_TS_Primary_Selection').on("change", function() {

if(document.getElementById("PTL_TS_Primary_Selection").getElementsByClassName("selectized")[0].value == "National"){
      document.getElementById("PTL_TS_Prov_Selection").getElementsByClassName("selectized")[0].selectize.setValue(null, false);
      document.getElementById("PTL_TS_Regional_Selection").getElementsByClassName("selectized")[0].selectize.setValue(null, false);
      document.getElementById("PTL_TS_Regional_Selection").style.display = "none";
      document.getElementById("PTL_TS_Prov_Selection").style.display = "none";
} else if(...

The solution (continued)

Conclusion

  • Rmarkdown in conjunction with plotly, crosstalk and flexashboard can be used as a workaround to develop interactive dashboards where shiny app hosting is not avaialble
  • This allows data to be shared in multiple formats to best support a whide range of audiences and promotes self service.
  • This in turn frees up analytical resource and enures analytical products are produced as efficiently as possible.